The Mercy review: Colin Firth all at sea in an unusual hero's tale

By Jake WIlson

Amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst is a legendary figure in Britain, but before seeing James Marsh's The Mercy I had never heard of him.

In retrospect, I'm glad I went in cold. Crowhurst's story is an unusual one – the adventurous director Nicolas Roeg (Performance) wanted to adapt it in the 1970s – and the film is hardly the straightforward, inspirational drama you might anticipate.

We open at a nautical trade show in 1968, where the guest of honour is the celebrated yachtsman Sir Francis Chichester (Simon McBurney), an unassuming fellow in a blue cap. Standing out from the rapt crowd is Crowhurst, played by Colin Firth. In his well-tailored suit, his face the size and colour of a large ham, he looks immediately smoother and more authoritative than those milling around in geeky period costume.

He's like an advertisement for Britishness – which is more or less what Firth has become, much as John Wayne, in his day, was an icon of American rugged individualism.

Marketing, in fact, is what Crowhurst seems mainly about. He owns a company specialising in navigation equipment, which we see him unsuccessfully trying to peddle.

He's only a weekend sailor but he yearns to get onto the open sea, and has his chance when the Sunday Times offers a prize for the fastest solo voyage around the world without stopping, a feat never before accomplished.

The film's first act dwells on Crowhurst's preparations for the voyage, aided by a group who suggest a cross-section of British society, including his millionaire sponsor (Ken Stott) and his shrewd press agent (David Thewlis). Most significant is his wife Clare (Rachel Weisz), who stands by him despite her doubts.

In this kind of story of male heroism, there's nearly always a woman in the background, typically a wet blanket we're glad to leave behind. But the casting of Weisz hints Marsh has something different in mind: even when holding back, she's too compelling to play second fiddle to anybody.

When Crowhurst finally gets under way, Marsh too is at a crossroads: will he stick with Crowhurst alone on the yacht, or will he make things easier for us by cutting to subplots on shore?

He takes the latter route, but with good reason. The film is not just about Crowhurst, but equally about those left behind - and since his struggle is as much internal as external, the interludes that show others tracking his progress eventually blur with what's happening inside his head.

Marsh is best-known for his 2014 Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, but he's long been drawn to men chasing impossible dreams, most compellingly in his 2008 documentary Man on Wire, about the French daredevil Philippe Petit.

Even that triumphant saga had an undertone of romantic melancholy: once you've reached the height of achievement, all that remains is to come back down to earth.

Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, who wrote the wonderful script for Steven Soderbergh's satirical The Informant, might be expected to view Crowhurst more sceptically - and the tension between romanticism and scepticism is the film's driving force.

Watching The Mercy, I thought I had never seen a film quite like it. Then I thought of James Gray's recent The Lost City of Z, with Charlie Hunnam as Percy Fawcett, who spent his life seeking a mythical civilisation in the Amazon jungle.

Both films are "true stories" that follow obsessive Englishmen on quixotic journeys, with nostalgic yet critical echoes of the grand adventure of imperialism (Crowhurst's voiceover narration, which opens The Mercy, references the Spanish conquistadors).

Marsh is not an artist on the level of Gray: The Mercy is oddly paced, in a way that may not be fully intentional, and relies a little heavily on the score by the late Johann Johannsson (Arrival), which shifts from anxious exuberance to atonal menace as trouble sets in.

Still, this is the more unsparing of the two films, forcing us to contemplate the arrogance that enables any quest for glory. All the same, Crowhurst does have his adventure, after his own fashion, and the very existence of The Mercy implies that it's only right he should be remembered.